New York Law Requiring Cheap $15 Broadband Takes Effect
from the actually-giving-a-shit dept
After King Trump’s dutiful Supreme Court recently refused to hear the case, a New York State law has taken effect requiring that ISPs provide low-income, state residents affordable $15 broadband. It’s a big win for digital equity activists and consumer groups that have long argued that America’s heavily monopolized (and barely competitive) broadband industry results in sky high prices for everyone, something that’s felt most keenly by the most vulnerable.
Big ISPs like Comcast and AT&T had fought tooth and nail against the law, first passed during peak COVID lockdowns when America was struggling with substandard broadband access during the home education and telecommunication boom.
New York’s Affordable Broadband Act exempts ISPs with less than 20,000 subscribers. It only applies to low-income residents who are on existing food stamp or other programs. It requires that ISPs provide these users access to either a 25 Mbps tier for $15 , or a 200 Mbps tier for $20.
NY State’s Affordable Broadband Act had a pained trajectory to fruition. In 2021 a US District Court judge blocked the law, claiming that the first Trump administration’s 2017 net neutrality repeal banned states from trying to regulate broadband. But courts repeatedly have shot down that claim, stating that the feds can’t abdicate their authority over broadband consumer protection and pre-empt state authority.
The idea of “rate regulation” is just about the most terrible phrase imaginable if you’re a telecom executive or “free market” Libertarian think tanker type. Limiting price gouging in this fashion is repeatedly brought up as a terrifying bogeyman in telecom policy conversations, though it very rarely manifests. NY’s effort is a fairly notable outlier in terms of such policy proposals.
A vast majority of U.S. state and federal telecom policies involve captured and corrupt policymakers simply doing whatever AT&T or Comcast says (merger approvals, mindless deregulation, big subsidy payouts, eroding consumer protection), which generally harms consumers and markets, and is usually held up by said free market Libertarians and telecom lobbyists as a “successful free market.”
New York’s case is important not just for the state’s low income families. It’s the first of many instances where state leaders are picking up the slack for a corrupt and captured fed.
As Trump 2.0 regulators like the FCC and FTC give up on consumer protection, it’s going to punt many of these fights to the state level. Given corporations spent so much money gutting Chevron deference in a bid to turn federal regulators into decorative gourds, they’re not going to like it much if consumer protection remains healthy and strong on the state level, even if it’s scattershot.
Corporate power’s goal really is no consumer protection on the state and federal level whatsoever. And contrary to folks to think that’s hyperbole, they’re well on the way to getting it thanks to the Trump courts.
The problem is that this is going to play out across so many sectors and issues over the next four years (immigration, environment, labor right, consumer protection) that states are going to get swamped with legal and policy fights, forcing them to truly pick and choose the most important battles. I could easily see broadband consumer protection and affordability issues being an early casualty.
Overall, New York State has been doing some very good things on broadband policy, levering ARPA and Infrastructure bills to help boost local broadband competition, including driving a lot of this historic subsidy infusion toward community owned and operated local broadband networks (yet another nightmare if you’re a telecom monopolist fat and comfortable with government capture).
Filed Under: affordable, broadband, high speed internet, monopoly, new york, rate regulation, telecom
Comments on “New York Law Requiring Cheap $15 Broadband Takes Effect”
I'll be pleasantly surprised if this is the end.
So what’s next? Attempt by the FCC to overrule the policy? New dubious telecom-backed lawsuit arguing the law’s unconstitutional? Massive lobbying campaign to stuff the state legislature with telecom puppets?
Have you ever been in a hotel or airplane that offered both free and premium wifi? In those instances, free wifi typically means glitchy unworkable wifi.
I sure hope NY regulations have some minimum metrics to ensure this doesn’t happen here.
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ISPs must support either, but I doubt many are going to offer the $20 plan.
• 25 down for $15
• 200 down for $20
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Well, it seems the New York law makers were smart enough to say the dollar amount must be inclusive of usage fees, but it seems they did leave a loophole by not mentioning upload speeds. Limiting those to like 100 kbit/s would ensure nobody could practically use the 25 Mbit/s speeds they’re technically getting.
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If federal guidelines apply, then the reference to “high speed broadband” would require 20/mbps down.
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Doh! I meant 20 mbps up.
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Guidelines are, by definition, not rules, and I see nothing in this NY bill that would turn the federal guideline into a state rule. It does make a rule based on federal poverty guidelines, but about federal speeds it just says:
Arstechnica had a good article about how one company hadn’t actually done anything to get the support in place for this:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/isp-failed-to-comply-with-new-yorks-15-broadband-law-until-ars-got-involved/
AT&T has pulled its NY 5g coverage over the act. Surprised Karl did not mention that.
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That’s right. King Trump. To be followed by 8 years of Vance.
You progtards really overplayed your hand. Time to reap the whirlwind!
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I highly doubt that if he crashes the economy again.
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Or tears up the wrong documents to flush down the john.
Thats not how politics work. No matter how bad a party Fs up – and quite frankly I don’t think we are in horrific times to label the prior administration an F up – the public will completely forget about it in four years. Case in point, see four years ago.
Still a far cry from what Poland is offering
I got a 600mbps fiber connection here for what amounts to $30 but only because I don’t need 1gbit connection that would cost me about $45.
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And that without any:
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So, tell us more. How’d Poland do it? Do they have rules that force incumbents to allow third-party fibre sharing? Telephone pole access? Prohibitions on landlord interference?
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The reason that you don’t need regulation is because you have ISP competition. With competition, the need for many regulations goes away since annoyed users can simply go to another provider.
For example, I have one choice for wireline internet service where I live. Spectrum 400 mbps/12 mbps over DOCSIS (cable internet) for about $90/month after taxes and fees. Frontier DSL at $30/month before taxes and fees for about 6 mbps down used to be available here but it’s not anymore.
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What I mean is that anyone who likes to have a decent Internet speeds and decent prices in general, should move to Poland. Even middle-of-nowhere countryside gets at least 20mbps internet here (and some villages have 1gbps fiber available).
Price controls distort markets. All this is going to do is make providers who can’t provide the service at that cost disappear from the market. They won’t get replaced with anything better or cheaper. You WILL end up with one of two outcomes:
If you actually want the cost to come down and options to open up you need to disassemble the regulatory stranglehold that AT&T and Comcast have which prevents other entrants into the market from competing. AT&T and Comcast are sclerotic aging behemoths. It can’t be that hard to simply outcompete them if anyone is allowed to do so.
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Or disassemble the companies themselves, in an actually useful way. Not the standard “one company gets New York, another gets New Jersey” type of thing. More like Comcast decides whether it wants to manage last-mile infrastructure, or provide retail internet and TV service over someone else’s infrastructure.
Were you around for the dial-up days? Back then, any idiot could order a hundred phone lines and sell internet service over them; for a customer, switching was (almost) as easy as having the computer dial a different phone number. That worked because the underlying networks were regulated to effectively be “open access”. When the incumbent telcos decided provide their own (unregulated) dial-up services, companies such as AOL kind of did outcompete them.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure this law just caused ATT to leave the State of New York all together just like a lot of other companies
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It might be painful at first and so suddenly, but big corporations leaving the state is a good thing, especially a state with a large market. Those same corporations get large subsidies, tax breaks, grants, etc. to build out service. Now those can go to smaller companies and municipal broadband organizations. It’s possible to provide the service at the low price if you’re not trying to float a fleet of CEO yachts.